Mao assassinated?

Mao had seldom few close encounters with death for a Communist dictator. There was only one assassination attempt on him in 1971 and his health was never a life threatening issue until about the time he died. Am I missing something? Was there a serious attempt on his life after 1949? Did he, like our good friend Stalin, have any threatening heart attacks? How can Mao plausibly be killed post 1949 without something radically different from OTL happening?
 
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I believe that during the Long March he got into a power struggle with a rival, and was nearly arrested, and would have probably been executed. He and his supporters were tipped off and they managed to escape, along with the code books required to contact the Soviets.
 
Also, Mao was not highly favored by Stalin in the 1930s; Stalin getting rid of him one way or another before Mao took effective control that made this difficult and impolitic later would be possible. I suspect a very big reason Mao took over was that in following Stalin's instructions, Stalin's handpicked leaders tended to get killed off by the KMT; the Maoists were the faction left standing due to taking their own counsel rather than obeying orders from the Kremlin. So Stalin didn't have much left to work with against him by the time he emerged as the heir apparent to Chinese Communism.

So yet another way to butterfly Mao, if not by killing him then by keeping him marginal within the Party, might be to have less of Stalin's high-handed and self-serving interference in the Chinese Party. We could butterfly away Stalin's rule in turn, or tie his hands so that the International is not under his control, or just change his personality a bit so that he's more interested in seeing progress and results from Red movements overseas than in making damn sure whatever their level of fortune or misfortune, they are obedient to himself. Then perhaps completely different people killed off OTL lead the Chinese Party. In these circumstances Mao himself might hold somewhat different views--though I bet his brand of radicalism was pretty fundamentally based on his basic personality and deep world views, so he'd probably always be a leftist radical in any TL.
 
Didn't he swim in a river full of pollution up to and including human waste as some propaganda stunt? That's a great way to get some disease.
 
Also, Mao was not highly favored by Stalin in the 1930s; Stalin getting rid of him one way or another before Mao took effective control that made this difficult and impolitic later would be possible. I suspect a very big reason Mao took over was that in following Stalin's instructions, Stalin's handpicked leaders tended to get killed off by the KMT; the Maoists were the faction left standing due to taking their own counsel rather than obeying orders from the Kremlin. So Stalin didn't have much left to work with against him by the time he emerged as the heir apparent to Chinese Communism.

So yet another way to butterfly Mao, if not by killing him then by keeping him marginal within the Party, might be to have less of Stalin's high-handed and self-serving interference in the Chinese Party. We could butterfly away Stalin's rule in turn, or tie his hands so that the International is not under his control, or just change his personality a bit so that he's more interested in seeing progress and results from Red movements overseas than in making damn sure whatever their level of fortune or misfortune, they are obedient to himself. Then perhaps completely different people killed off OTL lead the Chinese Party. In these circumstances Mao himself might hold somewhat different views--though I bet his brand of radicalism was pretty fundamentally based on his basic personality and deep world views, so he'd probably always be a leftist radical in any TL.

The problem with both suggestions is that they rely on the Communists somehow being able to do better with the Jiangxi Soviet and the pro-Soviet 21 Bolsheviks remain in power. The thing is the KMT was cracking down on them hard their military strategy when the long march happened was questionable, that what saw them lose power to Mao and company. Keeping him marginal might not even matter consider how the Chinese Communists were basically an afterthought as far importance came.

I don't even think if Stalin even wanted to try to get rid of Mao. First Stalin never really the Chinese Communists the time of day as far as caring went even after the 2nd he still backed Chaing, and hell he gave the nationalists aid specifically when Japan invaded. Second, the Long March happened in 1934, however by 1933 Stalin had already supported Communist leaning Sheng Shicai in taking over the resource-rich Xinjiang province as a satellite state, so again the Chinese Communists didn't really matter. Finally the Long March essentially the Chinese Communists on their own because contact was cut off between them and Moscow.
 
You want Mao to die from anything , get him infected with a virulent STD . Allegedly he was fond of both willing and unwilling virgins . With his sexual prowess all you need to do is introduce Syphilis or a similar but more fatal STD to him . Syphilis is a good option as it can be transmitted by several methods to the virgin . I have been told Camels carry it as an oral disease but I do not know if that is true , it was a story I was told about one of my Grandfathers friends who was bitten by a camel on his first day in Egypt during the second world war and was sent to a VD hospital once it was discovered what was wrong with him . He was livid with being accused of activities he had not taken part in .
 
Have him run into a KMT army during the Long March and get either captured or killed in the fighting. The encounter could even be engineered by a CCP rival, maybe someone like General Zhang Guotao.
 

Minty_Fresh

Banned
For a guy to be fat living in a country of millions dying through starvation, that is damn near treason.

The student-workers could have realized this and purged this counter revolutionary from the party!!
 
Well, it exists already, just not known. Maybe Mao can become one of the first cases of it.
I imagine that his autopsy report would be like this:
"The Chinese leader's cause of death was complications from an unknown disease, most likely of sexual nature."
 
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